


Halloween Costume

by ssrhpurgatory



Series: The Way They Lived (and related works) [6]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Chemotherapy mention, Dad!Hilbert, F/M, Halloween, Halloween Costumes, Illustrations, Kid!Eiffel, Star Wars - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:13:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27375508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory
Summary: Set in the universe of The Way They Lived, AKA the "Hilbert travels back in time at the moment of his death to his first day at Goddard Futuristics, tries to figure out how to be a better person, marries his lab manager, and adopts Eiffel with her" AU.In which Eiffel discovers neither of his new parents have seen the Star Wars movies and decides to fix this so that he can go as Luke Skywalker for Halloween.
Relationships: Alexander Hilbert/Original Female Character, Doug Eiffel & Alexander Hilbert
Series: The Way They Lived (and related works) [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1983253
Kudos: 4





	Halloween Costume

It was October, which meant that even in Florida they were starting to see a few cool days. Nothing truly cold, of course; Florida would never be anything but a swamp. But at least Alexander did not spend every day sweating his way from one climate-controlled building to another.

Doug had been in school for several months now and seemed to be enjoying it. He even had a group of friends; it turned out that there were several houses in their neighborhood who had young children as well, and Alexander had spent several Saturday afternoons over at one house or another, he and Rosemary making awkward conversation with other parents as the kids played in sprinklers and wading pools and something one parent had called a slip’n’slide, a sheet of water-coated plastic that seemed awfully perilous but which the kids enjoyed a great deal.

They were still adjusting to a life that was completely different to the one they had been living. No more worries that Carter would interfere; no more reason for them to work crazy hours in the lab. Alexander had been working together with Rosemary in the xenobiology lab as of late; so far, almost all of the life that Goddard’s deep-space survey missions had discovered was microbial, and he could be of help there. But there was no longer anything that required either him or Rosemary to give up their weekends and evenings for its care.

So, bit by bit, they had been adjusting to being just another family in the suburbs surrounding Cape Canaveral, to the unfamiliar rituals of suburban life. Each month seemed as if it brought a new one, at least where Doug was involved, and navigating these strange new social expectations proved a ready proving ground for their untested little family unit.

“We’re going trick or treating, right?” Doug asked over dinner one night, sounding hesitant. He was learning that he could ask for things he wanted without negative consequences, but Alexander suspected that the effects of the years Doug had spent in a group home would take a matter of years to dissipate, not the mere months the boy had been living with them.

“I don’t see why we wouldn’t,” Rosemary said, smiling at him. “You need a costume, right? What do you want to dress up as?

Doug considered for a moment, and then nodded decisively. “Luke Skywalker.”

“Luke who?” The name sounded vaguely familiar to Alexander, but he could not imagine why.

Doug gave him a disbelieving look. “From Star Wars?”

“Star Wars?” Alexander frowned, trying to remember where he had heard those words. “Is this one of your tv shows?”

“They’re movies.” Doug sounded appalled. “Haven’t you seen Star Wars?”

When Alexander shook his head, Doug turned his attention to Rosemary, who shrugged. “Sorry, darling. I haven’t been to see a movie in decades.”

This seemed to have short-circuited Doug’s brain. “What do you _mean_ you’ve never seen Star Wars? Everyone has seen Star Wars!”

Rosemary exchanged a look with Alexander, who shrugged as well. “Not us, apparently,” she said. “You could tell us about them?”

Those were the magic words where Doug was concerned. He spent the rest of the evening telling them a rather improbably story about space wizards with laser swords and a princess and a smuggler and several robots and a giant slug and… well, Alexander did not remember all of it. Finally, Rosemary had needed to laughingly reassure Doug that they would rent the movies and watch them together that weekend in order to get the boy to go to bed.

The movies, once rented, turned out to be a good deal more like Doug’s description than Alexander had expected. And, even more unexpectedly, he had enjoyed them… at least, once he managed to turn his brain off. They certainly were not narratives that bore a lot of scrutiny, but that had not stopped them from being fun, and Doug’s enthusiasm about them had certainly helped.

“Well, we can definitely get you a Luke Skywalker costume,” Rosemary was saying now, as the credits of the third film rolled across the screen. “Which one do you want?”

“I like the one from the first movie best,” Doug said. “Do you think you could make me a lightsaber?”

“We’ll see what we can do.” Rosemary smiled, a crooked, lopsided little thing that put a distracting dimple in her cheek that he wanted to press his lips to. “Or rather, what my tailor can do.”

“Should Rosemary and I wear costumes too? We could be, ah… Han Solo and Leia.”

Doug eyed Alexander dubiously. “I think you’re more of a C-3PO sort of person.”

Alexander felt mildly offended when Rosemary laughed at this, but then she winked at him and said, clearly teasing, “I guess that makes me R2-D2. Better go put the trash can lid on my head and practice my beeps and boops.”

“Would pay good money to see you in that dancer costume,” Alexander murmured in Rosemary’s ear after Doug had gone off to bed, while the two of them were laying side by side in the bed they shared.

“Oh, stop it. I’m way too saggy to pull off that sort of thing at my age,” she said, her face stretched into a smile she was clearly trying to suppress. “Awful man.”

“You married me.”

She laughed and rolled her eyes. “And I regret it every day.”

Those words, casually said, pierced through his good cheer. They were on more even footing these days, but the first few months of their marriage had been tumultuous, neither of them certain of what they were getting into or whether it was a good idea to do it, and both of them reluctant to trust the other with their heart. “Do you really?”

Rosemary’s face was suddenly solemn. “No,” she said, low and serious. “Maybe a few regrets about how we went about it at first. But not about choosing you.”

“Well, good.” The words were inadequate, but his voice was thick in his throat, as if he were on the verge of tears. He was certainly feeling as if his emotions were too large for his body. So instead of trying to find more words, he rolled onto his side and lifted his arm. Rosemary took his cue and slotted her back to his front, and he fell asleep with her cold feet against his shins and his lips pressed to the nape of her neck.

The next few weekends were a whirl of activity. A visit to Rosemary’s tailor to get Doug measured for his costume and some appliques applied to a white dress Rosemary hadn’t worn in a decade; trips to a craft store for supplies; consultations with Sterling, from Goddard’s engineering department, on how best to go about assembling a lightsaber that Doug could actually sword-fight with. It was almost a relief to have a project outside of work to throw his energy into, and he thought it might be for Rosemary as well; she had another session of chemotherapy during the weeks leading up to Halloween, and it seemed to do her some good to be able to keep her mind off how sick she felt by working on a silly hat.

His own costume involved dousing several pieces of old clothing in gold paint that left them stiff and difficult to move in, but Doug was so excited that Alexander could not bring himself to protest, even when the costume gained a cardboard chest plate that dug in to him awkwardly and reflective insets for a pair of round glasses that left him only a pinhole to see through. He would definitely need to rely on Rosemary to navigate their neighborhood, that much was certain.

But the evening of Halloween, Rosemary was still feeling tottery in the aftermath of her recent chemotherapy, and Alexander found himself hovering over her anxiously.

“You could stay home. Wait on porch with candy bowl.”

Rosemary sighed. “I’d end up getting up and down every time someone came up, which would be just as hard. And anyway, Doug would be disappointed if I stayed home. Better if I just toddle along with you. That’s what the cane is for, right?”

The cane was a new acquisition, and one she only resorted to reluctantly, complaining that it made her feel old when she was forced to rely on it. “You will tell me the instant you get tired,” he insisted.

She rolled her eyes. “Fine. Now come here, we found some face paint last weekend that should match all the rest of your get-up.”

Doug appeared as Rosemary was daubing Alexander’s face in gold face paint and picked up a sponge to help with the back of his head. Alexander suspected he would be picking flecks of gold out of his wrinkles for the next week.

It was worth it in the end, just for Doug’s excitement as he presented himself at each new house. They made it up and down the entire block, Rosemary leaning hard on both him and the cane every time they came to a halt but grinning the entire time, caught up in Doug’s enthusiasm.

“I am going to go take a shower and scrape myself clean,” Alexander said to no one in particular as Doug dumped his haul out on the living room floor and started going over it excitedly with Rosemary, who had slumped to the couch the instant they had returned home. “Do you need anything…?

Rosemary glanced up from her careful observations of Doug’s sorting algorithm, a smile on her face, and shook her head. “We’re fine. Go get yourself cleaned up.”

The paint took longer than he had expected to remove, and he suspected he had not gotten it all off. Still, there was only so long he could spend in the shower; he had already been in there long enough for his fingers to go all pruny.

When he left the bathroom, clad in pajamas that had looked extremely welcoming after the time he had spent in the gold-paint-stiffened clothing that had formed the base of his costume, the house was quiet. He padded down the hall to check on Doug first; he was asleep in his bed, still in his costume, clearly completely tuckered out from the excitement of the evening. Alexander considered trying to wake the boy up to get him to change into pajamas, but decided it wasn’t worth dealing with how cranky Doug was likely to be.

Doug could continue being Luke Skywalker a little longer.

The door to the bedroom Alexander shared with Rosemary was closed, and he opened it carefully, expecting her to be asleep already herself.

He definitely had not expected what was actually waiting for him.

“About time,” she said, rolling on to her side and propping her chin up on her hand. “I was starting to get _bored_.”

All Alexander could do was stare, wide-eyed and drop-jawed, at the sight in front of him.

She had been correct. She did sag in places where Leia’s actress did not.

That did not stop her from being the most glorious thing he had ever seen.

And that _definitely_ did not stop him from proving her own glory to her.


End file.
